The subject matter disclosed herein relates to fluid lifting devices and more particularly to monitoring health of the fluid lifting devices.
Generally, production of fluids from wells, such as oil wells, entails use of a variety of fluid lifting devices located downhole in the wells to pump the fluids from the wells to collection equipment. The collection equipment is typically located outside the well. Furthermore, the fluids are then transported from the collection equipment to processing stations. These fluid lifting devices, for example, may include electric submersible pumps (ESP) and subsea boosting systems (SBS). The ESP and SBS are typically located inside a well and hence are operated in extremely harsh environments, such as high temperature and high pressure environments. One or more sensors (hereinafter referred to as ‘downhole sensors’) located inside the well may monitor various parameters of the ESP and/or SBS. For example, the monitored parameters may include temperature, pressure, flow, vibrations inside the well, and the like. Typically, the downhole sensors are operationally coupled to remote monitoring systems that are located outside the wells and detect one or more faults in the ESP and/or SBS. The harsh operating environment of the downhole sensors entails use of robust downhole sensors which in turn leads to higher cost of the downhole sensors in comparison to sensors for monitoring motors located outside the wells.
Furthermore, such downhole sensors are generally limited by respective capabilities at least due to corresponding operational locations. Hence signals received from the downhole sensors may not be sufficient for predicting and detecting one or more defects in the ESP/SBS or cables that connect the ESP and/or the SBS to the remote monitoring systems. Consequently current remote monitoring systems lack the ability to proactively predict one or more potential defects in the ESP and/or SBS, and fail to provide advanced failure warnings. The lack of failure warnings may result in unexpected and prolonged oil-production-down-time with several other complications, such as maintenance scheduling challenges and loss of production.